


Both True and Misleading

by DesertVixen



Category: Clue (1985)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Ending Compliant, Gen, Period Typical Attitudes, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28114383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/pseuds/DesertVixen
Summary: Wadsworth prepares for his guests...
Comments: 23
Kudos: 53
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Both True and Misleading

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pinkheels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinkheels/gifts).



Really, Mr. Boddy’s network of spies and informers was quite impressive, Wadsworth thought as he checked the preparations for the evening’s events. 

It was a pity he hadn’t applied his talents to government work, but then government work didn’t pay as lavishly as blackmail.

That, and he enjoyed toying with people, giving them hope and then bringing down the hammer, ferreting out misdeeds and making them pay. The humiliation was almost as good as the monetary rewards, which Mr. Boddy had parlayed into fine furnishings, fine food, and women who charged by the hour.

So maybe government life would have been right up his alley, Wadsworth thought with a thin smile.

Mr. Boddy had relied heavily on women working in domestic staff jobs – and other “domestic” jobs – for much of his information. The type of woman who went almost unseen because she wore a servant’s uniform, who kept her eyes and ears open while she performed her underpaid tasks. Or the type of woman who kept men’s eyes on her, and encouraged them to loosen their tongues and wallets. There were male informers as well – overworked and underpaid public servants who liked getting a bit of payback, the occasional male servant who hated his job, and then there were people like Wadsworth.

People who had a secret that Mr. Boddy had discovered, and who paid for his silence by offering up other people’s secret humiliations. People who paid their bill in other methods, such as acting as his butler.

Wadsworth, however, was not like any of the other people that Mr. Boddy was blackmailing. He had a secret that Mr. Boddy didn’t know. 

He wasn’t a butler with the bad luck to have married a Socialist sympathizer cook who committed suicide.

He was an FBI agent who was going to bring Mr. Boddy’s little blackmail empire scheme down around his oily head.

The woman who had posed as his wife was alive and well, working on other cases out in California. He missed her – they’d made a good team – but he was looking forward to bringing this job to a tidy end. 

When everything was said and done, Wadsworth was definitely going to recommend the Bureau look at hiring Yvette. She was a master at figuring out secrets and using her feminine charms to make men talk, and he was willing to bet she was tired of men with wandering hands. As near as he could discover, her only secret was that she’d figured out she could make more money on her back than breaking her back, and she was hardly the first woman to make that jump. 

She was the only one he thought might be useful later. The cook was an excellent cook, but a thoroughly dislikable woman. The others who would be coming later in the evening to provide a little pressure on his chosen six were nothing special either, but Yvette was something else.

Everything was ready, Wadsworth thought. He had a prearranged time for the Bureau’s agents to arrive, and if things moved faster than he expected, he would stall. The anonymous letters had added just the right touch, offering the possibility of an end to the slowly bleeding wound of blackmail to lure in his six targets.

Mr. Boddy would be there as well, and Wadworth looked forward to seeing him cornered, in handcuffs.

The chosen six would be arriving soon. They were only a few of Mr. Boddy’s victims, chosen because Wadsworth either had a feeling that they would be willing to turn the blackmailer over to the police or because their secret had been deemed "sufficiently dangerous" by the Bureau. 

“Colonel Mustard” fit the second category – not that they really needed the pompous windbag on the fusion bomb project. On the other hand, he was pretty good at getting supplies from nowhere, but selling essential radio parts was a crime that indicated his willingness to line his pockets at government expense.

“Mrs. White” – her husband had also worked on the program, until his mysterious death. He didn’t actually think that she had killed him – the man might have been brilliant as a nuclear physicist, but as a man with a taste for other men’s wives, he was an idiot – but you never could tell. The fact that she paid the blackmail indicated there was some sort of secret there.

“Professor Plum” – his peccadilloes were relatively tame, although manipulating psychiatric patients into having affairs with him would have been enough for him to lose his license. “Plum” actually was doing good things in the World Health Organization, but he had a definite problem keeping it in his pants. Wadsworth had pegged him as one of the most likely to turn Mr. Boddy over.

“Mrs. Peacock”, the Senator’s wife who had definitely not taken Caesar’s wife as her role model. He wasn’t sure what kind of hold the foreign power she was passing information to had on her, but it would be an absolute disaster for “Senator Peacock” if it was known that his wife was undermining national security. By the same token, if he lost his government position and access, she would have no more secrets to pass along. If she cooperated, of course, the Bureau would do what it could to cover up her indiscretions – and ensure they stayed in the past tense.

“Mr. Green”, Wadsworth had chosen because he had some sympathy for the man. He didn’t buy the line that homosexuals were inherently untrustworthy – after all, most of them did a fairly good job of hiding their secret, a skill he could appreciate. “Green” had made the mistake of propositioning a man who Mr. Boddy was already blackmailing, and Wadsworth thought it likely that he would not make the same mistake twice.

“Miss Scarlet” seemed like a wildcard. She could afford to turn Mr. Boddy in, knowing that plenty of rich and powerful men had availed themselves of the service she provided, and would hardly want themselves exposed. He wondered if she saw the blackmail payment as just another business expense, like water and electricity. The oldest profession had been a lucrative one for her. Wadsworth was also fairly certain she knew plenty of secrets herself. That, and the fact that he was convinced that Yvette was collecting a paycheck from “Scarlet” as well as from Mr. Boddy. He wondered if she’d shared the same information with both of them, or if she was thinking about going into the secrets business for herself.

In two hours, it would all be over. Wadsworth would have another successful case in the books, and he could take a nice long vacation.

The doorbell rang, and he went to answer it.

The game was afoot. He would see how well they all played it.

**Author's Note:**

> So I hope you liked it! I'm also a huge Clue fan and enjoyed playing around with the back story (although I am a passionate Miss Scarlet fan).


End file.
